Announcements for this year’s Nobel winners started off with prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine. While congratulations are in order for the newly minted laureates, a bit of controversy is also stirring.

Ebola outbreaks are considered rare, but they do emerge every several years and can be quite lethal. Although the first confirmed Ebola epidemic was in 1976, we still lack licensed therapeutics to prevent and control Ebola’s spread. Vaccine development is in the works, but the lack of an approved treatment is a chilling reminder that we may not know enough about the virus. With the recent outbreaks in mind, we sought to summarize everything you should know about Ebola, its biology, and the current progress of vaccine development.

When I began my science journey as an undergrad, research seemed rigorous, but reassuringly straightforward in its tenets. Observe, question, hypothesize. Predict, test, analyze. And repeat. It made perfect sense to me that if you followed this protocol and remained unbiased in the process, great discoveries were sure to come.

But then I learned about the other steps in between. Steps like grant-writing, worrying about publishing and impact factors, getting your mentor to actually respond, and struggling to troubleshoot experiments. Twitter’s PhD community seems to relate.